Left-Behind Children’s Positive and Negative Social Adjustment: A qualitative Study in China

Abstract

Individual interviews were conducted with a total of 66 participants from five groups between May and November 2020: left-behind children, parents, teachers, principals, and community workers. The left-behind children group included 16 primary and secondary school students aged 10–16. Themes in the interviews’ data were identified based on the Grounded Theory. Left-behind children’s social maladjustment manifested as: (1) depression and loneliness; and (2) poor academic performance. Left-behind children’s positive social adjustment manifested as: (1) using adaptive coping strategies; and (2) life skills and independence. Left-behind children’s social adjustment is a dynamic process and has both positive and negative aspects.

Parents' Coping Strategies for their School Children's Issues: A Systematic Literature Review

“…In total, the main themes were reduced to ten themes only. Tu et al (2020) while the other ten research employed qualitative analyses (Boor et al, 2021;Dawes et al, 2021;Disasa 2022;Ilias et al, 2019;Johnson et al, 2020;Karaca & Konuk Şener, 2021;Liu et al, 2023;Saini et al, 2023;Wilmot et al, 2023;Wong & Wong, 2021). Meanwhile, three studies have applied the mixed-methods approach Chara et al (2023); Lewis et al (2022); Ünlütabak & Velioğlu (2022) (see Figure 3).…”

“…Regarding the context of issue touched by the selected studies, a total of seven papers involved raising autism children (AlBusaidi et al, 2022;Amireh 2019;Brillet et al, 2023;Gül et al, 2022;Ilias et al, 2019;Johnson et al, 2020;Lewis et al, 2022), while five articles related to COVID-19 pandemic (Aznar et al, 2021;Dawes et al, 2021;Morgan et al,2022;Saini et al, 2023;Ünlütabak & Velioğlu, 2022) and raising intellectual disabilities children (Auriemma et al, 2021;Disasa 2022;Karaca & Şener, 2021;Rajan & Romate, 2022;Wilmot et al, 2023). Two papers focused on the parent-children relationship issue (Boor et al, 2021;Donker et al, 2021) while following issue each research is regarding academic challenges (Tu et al, 2020), the coping strategy applied by children Santiago et al (2021), online learning from home Chara et al (2023), parent level of stress Cepuch et al (2022), raising Attention Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) children Wong and Wong (2021), raising disabled children (Kurowska et al, 2021), and social adjustment by left-behind children (Liu et al, 2023) (see Figure 4).…”

“…Meanwhile, five papers concentrated on adolescents (Boor et al, 2021;Donker et al, 2021;Morgan et al, 2022;Saini et al, 2023;Tu et al, 2020), while the other three papers fixated on preschool & elementary school children (Chara et al, 2023;Dawes et al, 2021;Ünlütabak & Velioğlu, 2022). The following category of children contain a paper each: Children with leukemia or lymphoma (Cepuch et al, 2022), dyslexia children (Wilmot et al, 2023), children of Mexican origins (Santiago et al, 2021), home-school children (Aznar et al, 2021) and left behind children (Liu et al, 2023) (see Figure 5).…”

“…Santiago et al ( 2021) discovered problem-focused strategy is used by some family with children of Mexican origin when facing stressful family problems. Problem-focused strategy is also used when parents in China leave behind their children due to working in far-away locations (Liu et al, 2023). Meanwhile, Dawes et al (2021); Morgan et al (2022); Saini et al (2023); Ünlütabak and Velioğlu (2022), reported the use of problem-focused coping strategies such as active coping, planning, and different kinds of activities when facing the stressful condition during the COVID-19 pandemic.…”

Policy Perspective on Governmental Implicit Debt Risks of Urban Rail Transit PPP Projects in China: A Grounded Theory Approach

“…As for ground theory, the test of theoretical saturation is applied to ensure the trustworthiness of the analyses. Theoretical saturation refers to the moment when additional data cannot be obtained to further develop the characteristics of a certain category [43,52]. Therefore, we used the other six new projects arranged in this article and went through the process of open coding, axial coding, and selective coding (See Appendix A).…”